Hundreds of elderly residents facing relocation to make way for Waterloo metro

On a clear day, the view from Peter Bowmar's Waterloo apartment pans across Redfern's rooftops, sweeping beyond the park made famous by Paul Keating's speech, and over the rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood.

Mr Bowmar's "penthouse suite", as he calls it, is in fact a modest bedsit on the 27th floor of Waterloo's Matavai tower – one of the area's two high rise markers of 1970s social housing policy, and Soviet-style architecture.

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But Mr Bowmar's resolve may soon be tested. In a little over a year from now, the Department of Family and Community Services plans to begin shifting the first of about 2630 residents out of the sprawling social housing estate.

It will be the first step in a long-term plan, staged over the next 15 to 20 years, to demolish the estate for new housing and the Waterloo metro station.

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The estate's 30-storey towers Matavai and Turanga, the four 16-storey blocks known as the Solander, Marton, Banks and Cook buildings, and a number of walk-up flats will all be demolished.

The NSW government has promised the relocation will be temporary and, according to a spokeswoman for Minister Pru Goward, all residents "will have the right to return to a new home at Waterloo".

But the relocation challenge promises to be as complicated, if not more so, than that which confronted FACS as a result of the sale of public housing in Millers Point, which affected almost 600 social housing residents.

Peter Bowmar, 66, has lived in the Matavai tower for 14 years. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer

Because Matavai and Turanga were originally designed to house low-income elderly residents, the demographics of Waterloo are skewed to the upper age brackets.

Almost half the residents are over 60, according to data obtained under freedom of information. Almost 300 of the residents are over 80, and 40 of them are over 90. One third are long-term residents, and have lived in the area for more than a decade. And just over 10 per cent of the 2630 residents identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.

The Matavai and Turanga towers are among the six housing blocks comprising the Waterloo housing estate. Photo: Cole Bennetts

Many of the tower's residents have stories that echo hers, she says.

"A lot people have been let down, or had to leave home because of violence. In a lot of cases, it's a sudden crisis."

Residents have been told the relocation will occur in stages, beginning in the middle of next year, but beyond that, details are scant. Meetings with FACS officers have yet to yield answers to basic questions, says Catherine Skipper, 80, who lives on Matavai's seventh floor.

Who will be relocated first? Where will they be housed? When will they be able to move back into the neighbourhood?

"People's lives are hooked into their community – their meaning and their identity. They seem to be totally unaware of this," Ms Skipper said of the department.

"They have all this terminology which presents things in a favourable light. But in fact, what they are presenting is a disastrous blow for many people," Ms Skipper said.